Preparing meals for a family can be very stressful, especially for individuals and families where both parents work full time. Preparing a meal for a family may often times lead to families going out to eat instead of preparing meals at home. The problem with eating outside the home, is that often times, the meals prepared at restaurants make use of processed foods that are neither healthy or calorie efficient. Nutritional information is often unknown and caloric intake is usually greatly increased over what would normally be prepared and consumed in the home.
When individuals do prepare meals in the home, often times the meals are pre-prepared from a package that is bought at a grocery store. While this type of food preparation can be easier and faster for the individual users, especially for families with little time to prepare food, the problems with these types of pre-prepared foods are that they are often similar to restaurant style food in that they are very much processed foods, with high caloric counts and with low nutritional value. Additionally, these pre-prepared foods can often be more expensive than the sum of their ingredients.
Another avenue that many individuals and families may prefer is to cook fresh meals utilizing fresh ingredients which allows for portion control, efficient use of nutritional value and proper caloric intake. While this type of cooking is more ideal and much more valuable, the downside to preparing fresh meals is that it requires fresh produce, whereby the individual user would need to purchase all the proper ingredients from a grocery store prior to preparing a meal for the family. Additionally, because all the ingredients need to be fresh, the preparation time is greatly increased because each ingredient may require prep work prior to introduction into the meal. Moreover, ingredients by themselves do not guarantee a good meal. Typically, the individual user will need some type of recipe to follow in order to prepare a good tasting meal. However, following a recipe or having all the correct ingredients for any particular recipe may be challenging for any specific individual. For example, many people are good at following recipes and following it quickly. However, for many individuals, it may take considerably more time to follow, learn and prepare a specific recipe. The dramatic difference in efficiency between the beginner and expert chef makes prep time predications extremely error prone. For example, although it should take an individual thirty minutes to prepare a particular recipe, some individuals may require much more time for the same recipe because of their particular cooking style or even distractions while they are cooking. So, what may look like an easy, quick cooking recipe may turn into a long and laborious process for some people.
Therefore, a need exists for a new and improved system and method to help individuals access cooking styles and preparation times. More specifically, what is needed is a new and improved system and method which allows individuals to view nutritional values associated with any particular menu or meal plan and utilize a user's recipe execution speed feedback in order to provide a personalized prediction of how long it will take to prepare any given menu. Moreover, a system and method is needed to organize recipe information including necessary ingredients and recommendations for accompanying dishes, drinks, desserts and the like.